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Adobe Ditches Flash for Mobile Devices

Even though Steve Jobs is gone, his influence and power still continues to shape the tech world. Adobe has announced that it will discontinue Flash for mobile devices. Apple's iPhones and iPads famously did not run Flash from day one, and seeing as Apple makes one of the leading mobile internet devices in the world, you could say it was only a matter of time before Flash stopped being implemented at all.

HTML5 is an open standard for the development of mobile applications. As a universal standard for developers, customers may very well be looking at universal applications for smartphones. Today, developers have to code differently for the different mobile operating systems present. However, if HTML 5 is adopted as the standard, it would be possible for developers to program a single application that will run on all smartphones; as long as it has an internet browser, it will be able to run the app.

Applications are one of the major features that attract consumers. Currently the iPhone boasts close to 500,000 applications while Android can offer approximately 300,000 applications making them the big dogs in the market. Windows Phone, which is a new entrant, already has about 35,000 applications available. But if all applications were capable of running on all mobile platforms with the help of HTML5, then manufacturers will have to differentiate their product in new ways so as to keep their competitive edge.